Episode 15: Adventures in Middle School
In this episode of the podcast, we're talking all about middle school: what it can be, what it often ends up being, what we regret, what we love, what we'd like to do differently, and why it can feel so darn hard. Plus: life on the back burner and fangirling over N.K. Jemisin.
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In this episode
TRANSCRIPT
(Note: We use an automatic transcriber for our podcasts, and sometimes it makes weird errors — we do edit the transcript, but I’m sure we miss stuff!)
[00:00:00] Suzanne: Hello, and welcome to the podcast with Suzanne and Amy, brought to you by home/school/life magazine. I'm Suzanne.
[00:00:16] Amy: And I'm Amy.
[00:00:18] Suzanne: And this is episode 15, recording on February 22nd, 2019, she said. Is that right?
[00:00:25] Amy: That is right.
[00:00:26] Suzanne: Am I in the right month?
[00:00:27] Amy: You actually know the date.
[00:00:30] Suzanne: How are you doing?
[00:00:31] Amy: I was going to say the kids at school make fun of me because I never say the right day.
I never actually know what day it is. Like I, I always call Monday, Tuesday and Tuesday, Thursday.
[00:00:40] Suzanne: You're used to teaching Tuesday, Thursday, and now you're also teaching Monday, Wednesday. So I used, I'm used to teaching Monday, Wednesday, and I'm now teaching Tuesday, Thursday also. So I do the same thing for the high school kids.
I'm like, so next Monday and they all panic, we're not actually going to be here on Monday. You know that, right? [00:01:00] It's okay. It's okay. It's okay.
[00:01:01] Amy: Is it wrong that I'm actually glad that's happening to you because I've been feeling very scattered.
[00:01:06] Suzanne: Oh, no, I've been doing that this whole year where I just like I'm finally getting a little bit better.
And actually the kids haven't freaked out as much. They're like you mean Monday. I mean you mean Tuesday, right? I'm like, yes, that's what I mean. Thank you. Go on with your lives. Hey, it's great to be back and we had asked what people were interested in hearing about for our next podcast and the answer we got back was middle school.
[00:01:30] Amy: Which makes sense since middle school is one of those things that suddenly looms over you like a specter of terror and you don't know what to do. Maybe that's just me?
[00:01:42] Suzanne: No, I think it's true. I think it's I was thinking about what's tough with middle school, right? As a homeschool parent, someone who was homeschooling already and wanted to continue homeschooling.
And it's I had the act down in elementary, right? I knew I had some curriculum I liked. Everybody liked being around the table. I [00:02:00] had us organized. Everything was fun and happy. And then you hit middle school and wow. It gets hard again. Yeah. Finding new curriculum, both because we've either used up the elementary curriculum that we liked, and it's time for some new stuff, or because The kids, they need something. They're ready. The students are ready for something that's more complex. That's asking a little bit more of them, which is appropriate. Or just, gosh, trying to find a good science curriculum out there for middle school. It's tough.
[00:02:39] Amy: It really is and it's I know I talk about this all the time, but it can be really difficult because middle school is when all those differences that your kids have really start to illuminate themselves.
All those wonderful differences that make them unique individuals become a real pain in middle [00:03:00] school because everything that you tried for one kid that worked great, that was perfect, suddenly seems like just torture. for the next one.
[00:03:09] Suzanne: Yeah. I think that's so true. And also they have opinions in middle school.
Oh wait, I have a kitten running onto the keyboard. I will redirect the kitten. All right. We're all good.
Yeah, suddenly it's before I was like, Hey, with elementary, early elementary, we get to do this stuff together. You and mom, this is going to be fun. This is going to be great.
Trying to do that in middle school, it's no, I don't want to do this. There are so many things I have on my list that I would rather do. I don't like this curriculum. I don't like this subject. I don't like anything that's happening right now. And yeah, we started hitting that a little bit earlier, like you've said before, like around third grade, fourth grade, but I think in middle school for us, it really kicked up. And for those of my kids who have really strong personalities, that's where we started to butt heads a lot more. And in part it was because they did [00:04:00] not enjoy what I was putting in front of them.
They were not interested.
[00:04:03] Amy: Don't you think that maybe part of the problem is that nobody knows what middle school is supposed to be? The kids don't know. The parents don't know. The pedagogists don't know. Everyone is always trying to figure out middle school.
[00:04:19] Suzanne: I'Ve been, I was, when I was thinking about middle school, I was trying to think back what I learned in my middle school. Junior high, right? I still use those terms interchangeably. So that was 7, 8, 9 for me. And I couldn't remember very much at all. I remember reading Anne Frank, the play. I remember doing a report on the Civil War. Mine was on Uncle Tom's Cabin, which I got a huge kick out of. Not the book, just I really enjoyed doing the report, because I learned a lot of stuff.
And I remember having a really great algebra teacher. And that is pretty much it. Oh, and I had a I was in a gifted English class that was actually a lot, that I do remember stuff from, [00:05:00] because we were doing, that was in ninth grade.
Right? That was getting into high school stuff.
[00:05:05] Amy: Same here. I remember when I look back at middle school, I remember the history and science fair that we did every year, doing projects for that. That was really fun for me. And I remember reading a few specific books, like we read The Pushcart War in my enrichment class which I really enjoyed.
I remember really enjoying it. And I learned what a widow's peak was.
[00:05:28] Suzanne: Oh that's very important. That shows up a lot. That shows up a lot in books.
[00:05:32] Amy: But yeah, there's not a ton that I remember learning, right? The things I remember tend to be things that I did.
[00:05:41] Suzanne: Like I said, that one report I did on Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin, I just remember being struck by I found the quote, are you the little lady who created this great war?
Something like that, and I was just really enjoying that and enjoying the idea this book could have on people. But that was [00:06:00] something I felt like I almost discovered myself. The teacher, that wasn't something we learned in class. That wasn't something that was lectured on.
It was a separate report. We all chose a topic, and that was mine. I don't remember much about actual class time, which is different than high school. And also different than elementary school. Of course, high school, I remember learning things in elementary school and learning things in high school.
And being very engaged with teachers, very oh gosh, lots of back and forth. And them actually getting you to understand big concepts. Instead of necessarily, smaller pieces. So yeah, I think it's tough. It's tough to figure out what they do. And I will say, that was only reinforced when my crews started going off to our local public high school.
I was terrified. I had tried in my middle school, and we can talk about how some of that went because there were some successes and some not successes. I had tried to keep up basically with the three R's. I had [00:07:00] tried to focus to make sure they kept up with their math and they kept up with language arts, even though I still struggled with what does that mean?
And we let history and science go by the wayside a little bit. We did some fun things with it, but we didn't dive into it in any serious way. And I was a little worried what would happen when they went off to high school and started. So let's see, the first science course they take, 9th grade honors biology.
The first social studies course, really the first history, they go right into AP world in their sophomore year. and they all did fine. I mean It was they didn't expect you to come in knowing all this stuff in high school, right? They really, there really wasn't, it made me wonder what everybody had been working so hard on those three years in traditional middle school.
Because I know they do sometimes they jump you a year, right? Some of the middle schools around here are giving the ninth grade biology allowing middle schoolers to take that for high school credit, which a lot [00:08:00] of my friends have some issues with because they just don't think that middle schoolers can engage with that material the same way that high schoolers can.
And also that's the last time they'll take that topic until they might encounter it again in college.
[00:08:12] Amy: I find that problematic. Myself I think the test should always be could your student's work stand beside a high school student's work, right? And if it could, then sure, count it for college credit or high school credit, right?
But if not, maybe it shouldn't count for high school credit.
[00:08:31] Suzanne: I think, and once you get into things like science and history, I think that's harder. Math, it's like some kids, it's more intuitive. There's a path, right? You can get further along with the math, but when you're getting into science and history, you're talking about other skills.
It's not just the, in history you're reading, you're doing analysis, you're writing. Same thing with science. There's a, you're writing things up, you're learning to analyze things, And so anyway, the, this tangent was to say that when my kids did go into, high level academic [00:09:00] high school math and science, sorry, science and history, they did fine, even us having just played around with it for three years in our middle school.
[00:09:09] Amy: To me, that makes perfect sense, because if you spend a lot of time reading educational philosophy, which some people do for fun, Suzanne, be quiet.
[00:09:18] Suzanne: I'm glad that one of us knows some. That's just, I'm glad about that.
[00:09:22] Amy: But there's actually not a lot of new information that gets acquired or that people expect you to acquire between about fifth grade and about eighth grade.
What you're learning is To do stuff with the information you've already learned, you're refining it. I'm not saying that you don't do any learning, that nothing important happens. Obviously you learn stuff, but there's not really anything new to master. You're working on extending your mastery of things that you've already learned.
So it totally makes sense to me that your kids would be fine going into high school because you set them up really well in elementary school. They learned everything that they needed to know.
[00:09:59] Suzanne: It [00:10:00] makes sense when I just not having read. educational philosophy, but just come, if I think about it, yeah, the kids in elementary, you're learning how to, in writing and reading, you're creating sentences, you're creating paragraphs in middle school.
Those are, you're learning more complex ways of putting those together. And even with math, you don't get into a lot of new stuff. You just get into different kinds of arithmetic for a long time, doing fractions, doing decimals, all that kind of stuff. Yes, it's new and necessary material in some ways.
But you're not, there's not anything fundamentally new conceptually.
IT's almost like in elementary school, you're filling up your toolkit, right? And then in high school, you're using your toolkit, but in middle school, you're spending a lot of time organizing your toolkit, right? You're moving stuff around, putting it in the right order.
I don't know, Amy. Are you suggesting that we could have just taken those three years off in homeschool? Because I wish I had spoken to you several years ago.
[00:10:57] Amy: I think it was several years ago. I was speaking [00:11:00] to you panicking about middle school, right? Full circle, Suzanne. Suzanne was so nice. We had not known each other very, I know this is a tangent, but we had not known each other very long at all.
And I called her, or I'm sure I didn't call you. I would never call somebody, but I emailed you. And I said, I'm just having these complete panic attacks. We're starting sixth grade. I don't know what to do. I feel like the sky is falling. And Suzanne took me to a Mexican restaurant. She let me eat chips and salsa and just completely have hysterics about middle school and reassured me that I would be fine.
Here's what she did, but I would be fine whatever I did. I've carried that with me, Suzanne.
[00:11:41] Suzanne: I will. And I think so far. So far so good, we've seen that boring out, right? At least with our experience, is that, we muddled through, I did some stuff that I think worked really well, I did some stuff that didn't work really well I think we learned some stuff along the way at least you learned it in [00:12:00] time to actually apply it to One of your kids.
[00:12:03] Amy: I did leave a nice big gap between my children. That's, it's not my fault, Suzanne, that you were inefficient with your child, or you were super efficient with your child.
[00:12:11] Suzanne: One of the two, one of the two. So when you're thinking about middle school going forward now what are you thinking about?
[00:12:18] Amy: My big idea for middle school now, and it's really inspired by my son, who's very different from my daughter, but also inspired by the junior high where Suzanne teaches middle School. I'm wondering why we don't treat junior high more like kindergarten because Kindergarten is the gentlest possible jumping off point for the rest of school. It sets you up to know how to learn but more importantly to love learning to have confidence in your ability to learn and to feel like it's something that you want to do right that it's fun, interesting, and that it's worthwhile.
It's not something your mom has to argue with you to get out of bed [00:13:00] and do.
So my thought is, what if we tried to make middle school like that? What if we tried to re- envision middle school as the gentlest possible jumping off point? For high school, what if instead of just spending three years reorganizing our toolkits, which I mean, I could reorganize things all day.
That's always really fun. But instead of just reorganizing our toolkits, what if we looked for ways to make our tools shinier? and more interesting and get the very coolest possible ones, order the cool ones from Japan, right?
[00:13:33] Suzanne: Get the really cute stickers.
[00:13:35] Amy: ThE good stickers. I feel like if we took a kindergartening approach, if we focused on just the skills that you really need in high school and getting really comfortable with those with lots of repetition, lots of fun, lots of group activities, because I think you can't overestimate the importance of social connection at this age.
[00:13:56] Suzanne: Oh yeah, and I have a whole bunch I want to say about that. We'll talk about that in a minute. [00:14:00]
[00:14:01] Amy: And we make middle school the kindergarten for high school, so that when kids leave middle school, they feel just like they do when they leave kindergarten.
Confident, they feel smart, they feel capable, and they feel actually genuinely excited about learning. I don't know. I don't know about you, but I know a lot of kids in middle school, and I would not say excited about learning is one of the big characteristics that they share. Most of them are burned out and bummed out by school.
[00:14:29] Suzanne: That, that happens, I think, for a lot of kids. But I can even see the change between, at our school between the junior high and the high school kids, right? Those middle schoolers come in and they're still, there's a level of excitement and interest and a willingness that they're still interested in what I have to say.
[00:14:49] Amy: They still care that you are proud of them. That's right. They still want you to think that they're doing a good job. That's right. Whether they actually want to do the work of doing a good job all the time or not, they want you to [00:15:00] feel like they're doing a good job. Yeah, totally fair.
[00:15:01] Suzanne: Totally fair. And in high school, and kids are older, they have so much more going on, all that kind of stuff.
But I think it's a lot more of, this is something that I have to do in order to get on with the rest of my life that I'm actually interested in.
[00:15:17] Amy: And middle school can beat that enthusiasm out of kids? Yes. Or it can bring it to life. Yes,
[00:15:23] Suzanne: and we've had some really interesting conversations about planning for next year around that.
That's been really helpful to me to think of it that way. For example, in junior high literature, I am on team read all the things, right? And Because I in middle school and strong readers in middle school are often able, this is when you discover the adult section of the library, right?
This is when you dive Agatha Christie's were probably my entry point. When you start just really realizing that there's this world beyond children's literature that is available to you. And because that was my [00:16:00] experience, I think I always want to push kids that age to stretch, to get to the next big thing, to get, to get beyond a little bit, to push them a little bit, which I don't think that's bad at all, but there's also all the time in the world.
And we were talking about what, how we could best set them up for the high school and that maybe the best thing we could do for them going into high school is have them enjoy reading, have them see reading as something that is, It's fun and interesting, and yeah, I don't like every book that I've ever read, but I'm always interested to see what the next book is.
And if that's my approach, if that's my goal, that I want to send kids to the high school who are always excited to see what the next book is, wow, that really has a big impact on the books that I'm going to choose in middle school for them to read, that I'm going to assign. For them to read.
And [00:17:00] that's a powerful.
And I still do for example, we're doing literature history. It's American history, American literature next year. Yes, we'll, we will do some, we will talk about, oh, the Constitution the preamble, the Gettysburg Address. We'll talk about some hard stuff next year.
But maybe in the literature side, Instead of me trying, being so eager to push them into high school level reading, maybe my goal is to find like the, a really great YA novel set in that time period that we can talk about and discuss and have a really fun time with that's also fun to read.
Certainly, this semester this past semester, we read Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor in our World Lit class which is a YA novel set in Nigeria, and that has by far been the most popular reading that we've done, and I'm sure it will stick with kids a lot longer than, The other kind of stuff I felt that they should have. Do you know what I mean?
[00:17:59] Amy: [00:18:00] They talk about that. I mean on their way to lunch and when they get back from lunch they talk about Akata Witch. They love it. And You can't, the value of that is immeasurable, the value of actually loving what you read.
[00:18:12] Suzanne: So if I send a kid off to high school whose last assigned reading was Akata Witch, which they loved, as opposed to the last assigned reading was last semester when we were doing Asia, I had them read small excerpts, just small excerpts from like Confucius or something like that.
[00:18:26] Amy: No. I am I do not have any sympathy for them not liking Confucius. Confucius is great. That's not a good example.
[00:18:34] Suzanne: It seems because I had them like rewrite, rewrite some of his, anyway, they hated it. They hated every minute of it. I would rather Akata Witch be their last experience of assigned reading than Confucius or something else that they absolutely hate it, right? Because that just gives you a different attitude. Exactly.
[00:18:54] Amy: But not to make it the whole focus, to make the whole focus books that they love so that they're willing to give the stuff [00:19:00] they don't like a try.
[00:19:01] Suzanne: And I think if I was able to go back in time and give myself advice going into middle school, I think that's a big piece of the advice I would get is it's going to be okay.
That's always the first piece of advice I get. It's all going to be okay. And it is okay to ramp down on the academics. a little bit, right? It is okay. I don't have to pick let's see, a book that is at the top of my child's reading range. I can choose something that's maybe more fun and interesting and relatable that's in the middle, right?
With math, So we've done Saxon math all the way through. There are some great things about Saxon math. It does change right around middle school or just before middle school. It changes from this fun, manipulative based, interactive program that my kids all universally loved to a much more straightforward, traditional textbook based program that None of my kids loved and some hated with a [00:20:00] passion and I was always worried about if, with math I always wanted to leave the option open if they needed to go back to traditional school, which they did end up doing a high school.
I wanted them to be able to work on level, which is much less of a concern if you don't have to worry about keeping that option open and on level is meaningless. Anyway, that's a whole other podcast, but whatever.
[00:20:26] Amy: No, it's tough if you want to go back to a traditional school because they have very clear expectations of what, with math more than anything else of what you should have mastered in a certain grade.
[00:20:36] Suzanne: And what I found with Saxon math, which I do recommend to other. people is, all of my kids who have gone, since going on to high school, have said, you know what, Saxon math gave me a really good grounding. In two of my kids though, that's 50 percent of my sample set, they just hated it so much that it killed their joy in math, mathematics for a while.
It both killed their joy and it made them [00:21:00] feel like they weren't good at it. Now, one of those kids, it's really early days yet, but one of those kids has rediscovered his joy and maybe pointed at. Ultimately many moons from now and ultimately a college degree in mathematics. The other one may looks like she, she's rediscovered her love of science, which is one of the things that I killed when I said, hey, but you got to know math to do science and might be headed towards a STEM degree.
So it all worked out okay.
[00:21:31] Amy: So basically the message is that you can't really ruin them for math, right? I'm hoping that's the message.
[00:21:36] Suzanne: But if I had gone back, I would do it differently, right? I'd want to hang on to, there's some things that I want to hang on to the fact that they got this really good grounding, but what I would have done differently, I would, I think I would have been more willing to pull in different curriculum, right? Different curricula to try. Even if we didn't walk away from Saxon entirely, you guys need a break. Let's spend a month doing, trying this one over here, or let's [00:22:00] spend a month, that, okay, let's try this one. Let's just do, let's just try a whole bunch of different ways of approaching math or maybe.
One thing I ultimately did was pull back on the amount of time that we devoted to it. And that all worked out fine too. I was scared to death that I was going to be ruining them. But it, they learned what they needed to learn. So I think maybe just a willingness to not spend as much time doing things that they hate trying new ways of learning, taking frequent breaks.
I think I could have handled that. Which of course is hard, and the reason I didn't do all that right was for two reasons, one, cause I was scared to death that they wouldn't be able to tackle high school level work. And the second one was I had four kids around the table and this, the management and logistics of all that is challenging, but maybe if I could have taken a deep breath and it's all going to be okay.
And let's focus. [00:23:00] Let's find something that gets them enjoying math again. That would have been a good way to, to, to approach that.
[00:23:07] Amy: And I will here give a little shout out to one of the middle school math things that we did that was actually great and fun and that didn't make my daughter want To move away to another place with another mother who wasn't so terrible about math which was pet store math.
Do you know this? It's a part of the Charlotte Mason your business math series.
[00:23:30] Suzanne: Oh, how fun!
[00:23:32] Amy: And basically what you do is you run a pet shop for a year. You get to order your animals, which my daughter loves animals. So you can imagine how much she enjoyed this. So she could order guinea pigs and she would draw pictures of them in a book and give them names and things, which made it more fun for her.
But you'd, so you'd keep your inventory and every month you'd have sales and. So you'd have to keep up with how much you'd sold. You'd have to add taxes to it. You'd have to keep your profit. Then you'd have to figure out, your [00:24:00] losses. You'd have to pay the bills for your lights and everything.
And it was actually a lot of math, a lot of good math. She was doing decimals and fractions and percents. But she had fun the whole time.
[00:24:12] Suzanne: Right, and how powerful is it that, again, imagining sending your child off to high school, whatever that looks like, feeling that they're self confident in this particular area that they know math, they're good at math, and they enjoy math, rather than maybe with, on my end, I think my kids Even if they'd gone a little farther in the math book, they didn't have that same attitude towards it, right?
And if you've got the right attitude, if you feel that you enjoy it, you can do it. You can catch up and do whatever you want to do.
[00:24:46] Amy: And I think it must have been tricky for you because you are a mathy person. Yeah. And I think it's hard when your kids Are different from you. I feel like I had, I know I say this over and over, but I feel [00:25:00] like I've had it so easy with my daughter because when it comes to learning, she learns exactly the way I do.
She reads the book, she talks about it, she writes stuff down and that's how she processes. That's how I process it for me. My son is the opposite and it is really difficult sometimes for me to shift from what's comfortable for me to pay attention to what works for him.
[00:25:23] Suzanne: And I felt, I know I felt too, just at such a loss just at I don't even know how to go about finding, whether whatever subject it is, grammar, spelling, math, lit, finding something that they don't, that they don't hate or that matches better with them.
And now looking back, partly this is a resource issue, right? I am a curriculum junkie, but gosh, just keep trying things. One, one approach is just keep trying new stuff. Now, sometimes that that does lead into money which is a problem when you're a curriculum [00:26:00] junkie, but there's so much stuff available online now.
If you have a homeschool community, you might be able to borrow curriculum from other people just for a few weeks even, and I think that Even if I'd gone through all that and I hadn't found like a magic curriculum that met both my needs, what I needed out of it the bare minimums and what my children Got what they needed out of it, right?
That at least we would have, it would have been interesting, right? Okay. Let's try this month. Let's see how this goes this month. And and also I think whatever you can do to bring your kids into that process at this age, if you haven't already definitely start doing that, right? You want to brainstorm with your kids about what should we try next?
What about this isn't working? Okay. How does this look to you? Let's give this a try and then see. I think this is the time to start doing that and also to start talking about, Hey, what's next? What does our high school experience going to look? What is it going [00:27:00] to look like after middle school? What are the students thinking?
Are they thinking, starting to think that they might like to try a regular high school if they've been homeschooled? Or if they are on the, homeschool for life train? And of course that stuff can change as you, and it will change, but if you start having those conversations and it's clear okay if your goal is this to enter, say, ninth grade with your friends at the traditional high school, then we, this is where we need to get you, right?
This is what we need to achieve sometime, during middle school. And, at this age, you can have those conversations. You can do that brainstorming together, and you can set those goals together.
[00:27:40] Amy: And you can test drive lots of stuff. I mean visit every school that you can. Visit the local high school.
Visit private schools. Visit private hybrid home schools. Take every class at the Parks and Rec. Take classes at the Science Center. Sign up for Everything. Expose yourself to as much as possible [00:28:00] because that will help you make a good decision.
[00:28:02] Suzanne: Yes, absolutely. And that leads me into the extracurriculars in middle school, which I think, I know it was harder for me as my kids got older and had different interests.
I just got tired of schlepping everybody around in the van, honestly. But it's so important in middle school, I think and beyond the academics, right? That's another thing I think in middle school is I, if I could go back in time, I maybe would have switched the percentages a little bit and been more comfortable focusing, focusing less on, Straight academics, and more on, let us sign up for every not all at once, but over a period of time, let's try every single class at the Parks and Rec that you're interested in.
Let's make sure you get a chance to try a whole bunch of different day camps in the summer. Man, this is the time in middle school to try out Everything. And not just academically, but in terms of sports, in terms of art dance, [00:29:00] musical theater robotics classes, film classes, whatever you can find, there's a lot of ways to do it really inexpensively through Parks and Rec.
And then a lot of the, if you have a local karate dojo, they will often let kids come in and have a free lesson or two, or maybe even a week's worth of free lessons. This is the time to schlep your kids all over town and try everything. Because they're really starting to figure out what they enjoy and it's so great to see them get passionate and interested about things.
[00:29:32] Amy: And it's funny because it's usually the reverse of this that, that we end up doing, right? We scale back on the fun stuff. We stop going to park days. We stop doing all the fun Nature Center activities when we get to middle school because we're more serious about the school. When it might make more sense.
Again, to treat it like kindergarten, to go back to doing all the fun stuff.
[00:29:54] Suzanne: And I very much felt that way. I very much felt this way. High school is on the horizon. I got to buckle down and get [00:30:00] serious about middle school. And it all worked out fine, but I do think it's finding that balance between, okay, what are our goals academically?
What do we need to have? And realistically, How much time did that take? Probably less than you think, because in the homeschool world we are doing the one on one tutoring that is such an efficient way of teaching, that you do have the luxury to spend less time on academics and more time on, like you say, park days.
What's the local art museum doing? Let's visit. Let's take advantage of everything in our hometown. Yeah, so I think it's okay to lean on that stuff in middle school in ways that I wasn't prepared to do, I think, when my kids were that age.
[00:30:47] Amy: iT's scary because the one thing I think that as academic homeschoolers when you make a choice that you're going to be an academic homeschooler, there's a lot of worry that goes with that, that your child [00:31:00] won't be able to live up to academic standards.
That you will somehow fail your child. And so I think in many ways, academic homeschoolers are prone to push harder, to do more, to take classes more seriously because we don't want to fail our kids.
[00:31:16] Suzanne: And I just want to talk about social stuff for a minute. Because I feel like it's so important to take time for friends during this period.
And for what for what that meant for us, often, is driving 45 minutes. Because our friends are Atlanta. Yeah, because Atlanta. And that was always hard. It was like, do we take this time, for me, do we take this time out of the day? But gosh, it is so necessary. I think when our kids hit this age, they are the ones that are telling us, whether directly or indirectly, that this, the friend groups are so important.
And To be honest this is something we really struggled with. I really struggled with as a [00:32:00] homeschooler. By middle school, my kids could look around, if they go to a birthday party for a friend who is in traditional school, that friend has 30 kids at their birthday party. And my kid can maybe scare up two for Because you can't just put them together, right? Elementary school young kids are easy. I'm good friends. With this person and she has a daughter who's about the right age, you'll throw them together instant friends, that's not working anymore in middle school.
And my kids expressed to me often that they felt that they didn't have, they didn't have any friends. And it didn't matter how many times I tried to tell them was like there's 30 kids at your friend's birthday party. She was really only close with a couple of them, or whatever, it just, they really felt the lack of that.
So all of this extracurricular stuff, all of this getting out for park days, sports, whatever it is you're doing, that's another opportunity to meet people. And I wish I could tell you that I had the magic [00:33:00] formula just join your local homeschool support group. That's a great idea, it didn't solve this problem for us, right?
We never really solved it. What we kept doing was we just kept trying new things and just kept getting out there and just kept trying to meet more people. And when my kid met somebody they liked, excuse me, they, we drove 45 minutes. We took time out of the school day, if that's the only time they could get together.
And we committed to doing what we could with that relationship. Online friendships. Also, my kids have made some really great online friendships. And, that counts. It, it counts. It helps. Totally. And, oh, and I have to make, when we're talking about extracurricular and social stuff, I have to make my, my plug for Duke Tip, the Duke.
[00:33:50] Amy: Oh, I loved, I, Duke Tip is so old that I went back in the day.
[00:33:55] Suzanne: And it's not quite old enough for me so that's how we originally got into it, was you talking [00:34:00] about how much you enjoyed it. I, I,
[00:34:02] Amy: it was, I'm just gonna say, it was the first place where I met people that I had stuff in common with.
And I think that is, I do want to say, I think the social stuff in middle school, Yeah, middle school is super important, but I don't think that it's just homeschoolers who struggle with it. Middle school is hard for a lot of kids for all the reasons that you said. You're starting to figure out the kind of people that you want to be friends with, and it's not all 30 kids in your class.
[00:34:28] Suzanne: It may not be anybody in your school, in your grade. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:34:31] Amy: So even being in a forced social environment doesn't necessarily make middle school social stuff easier.
[00:34:39] Suzanne: No. But it does give the illusion. Yeah. Yeah. I think.
[00:34:41] Amy: Yes, but now you can plug Duke Tip because it's awesome.
[00:34:44] Suzanne: Oh, now I can plug Duke Tip.
All right. So if you're unfamiliar, it's TIP is, it stands for Talent Identification Program. And the way you get into it is your seventh, when your child is in seventh grade, you can sign up to participate in the program. [00:35:00] Basically, I haven't signed up in a while, and they've made some changes, but when I did sign up, as a homeschooler, I went in and said, okay, and we have done standardized tests, and it would say your child had to make a minimum on one of these range of dozens and dozens of standardized tests to qualify for the program.
My children had, but also I will just note that we did not have to send in any supporting documentation, that it was all on the honor system. So I will just note that and pass on. Then, through the program, they signed up to take either the SAT or the ACT. You send your little 7th grader in with all of the big kids.
And then, based on how well they do on that they may be eligible for some of the summer studies programs. And, all four of my kids have gone. My, My two oldest aged out. There's four years that you're eligible. The summer after 7th, 8th. 9th and 10th grades my, my 3rd [00:36:00] child will be going for her 4th and final year this summer and my youngest is going for his 2nd year, and in fact, so they live on the college campus, they've, my kids have been to New College in Florida, they've been to Duke several times, they've been to Wake Forest Davidson in North Carolina, and actually my youngest is gonna have his next one at Georgia Tech this next summer.
So you live on campus for three weeks and it's nerd camp. Yeah. And it's not just nerd camp. It's also extraordinarily welcoming for kids who identify as queer kids who, if you're passionate about music or art or drama or something, that maybe isn't football, not that there's anything wrong with being passionate about football, but.
Maybe something that isn't quite so supported in the school environment. It's a really great home for all of those kids. Last year, my son with his first experience, he roomed they set him up with, his roommate was [00:37:00] another homeschooler who lives in Stone Mountain, so he's one of the kids we drive 45 minutes so they can get together.
Yeah, so it's really great, and it's another way of, you pick a course my kids have done everything from, oh gosh let's see, creative writing psychology, math problem solving public speaking. You can explore a, it's another opportunity to explore a range of interests and find something that maybe you didn't even know you were interested in.
And yeah, I can't recommend it. It is pricey, but they have financial aid available, and I encourage you to explore that option.
[00:37:41] Amy: And I will say, all these years later, I am still in contact with people I met at Duke. When I did it, you could only go to Duke. That's how old I am, so don't do the math, please.
But but I still am in contact with those people. I felt like a weird, lonely kid. And, Duke didn't make [00:38:00] me feel less weird. It definitely made me feel less lonely and more okay about being weird.
[00:38:04] Suzanne: And of course these kids today they don't, today these kids , they don't ever have to be out of contact with their friends that they met over the summer, right?
They're all on social media. So they all are They become part of that community year round. And yeah, I, there's ups and downs and there's good things and bad things but overall it's been a really great experience. And I think it's especially good. Maybe I'm biased, but I do think it's especially great for homeschoolers to see what it's like, to see, for my kids, it was their first experience of sleep away camp. It was the first experience of living on a college campus, and it was their first experience of really being taught in depth in a classroom setting, although. It's not, it's much more fun and open than a typical classroom setting, but it still was their first classroom setting experience.
And I had that as their lead in than [00:39:00] when they made the switch from homeschool to high school. And I felt so much better that they at least had that experience. When they went into the traditional high school setting
[00:39:10] Amy: And the Duke program is fantastic. It has a soft spot for me, but there are also other universities that have similar programs.
I know Johns Hopkins has something and Stanford and probably lots of other places that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head that are also great experiences.
[00:39:27] Suzanne: So kind of like wherever, whatever part of your country you're in. So we're in the Southeast. So Duke tip is pretty much what people do here, but yeah, all over the country, there's things available.
[00:39:38] Amy: And there are tons of options. Duke tip does require you to get certain test scores, right? Which everyone isn't great at testing. So it's not like there are no options if you're not a great test taker. I know that just here in Atlanta, a ton of the schools here have programs that middle schoolers can do.
There's a Saturday school at Georgia State University. Emory [00:40:00] has some summer programs for kids. Georgia Tech has programs for kids all year. The University of Georgia has stuff if you don't mind driving to Athens. There's all kinds of student activities, interest led activities, passion subject activities at local colleges for middle and high schoolers.
You just might have to do a little digging to find the ones near you.
[00:40:23] Suzanne: And again, I've learned. It's okay to ramp back. That's going to take time out of your day, right? So maybe you spend some time researching this stuff and spending your energy on these kind of opportunities, and you have less time for researching what math curriculum you're going to do, or your hardcore kind of daily academics, and I really think that's okay.
I really think it's okay to put your focus, or at least put some focus, In that area, because again, the goal is to, quote, graduate a middle schooler who's part of being ready for high school is that they are excited interested, and [00:41:00] they believe that this is going to be a fun experience.
yEah. I think there's a lot of, we could have, we should have had a lot more fun in middle school.
[00:41:08] Amy: That is, that's the lesson, I think, that it's okay to have more fun in middle school. It is okay to not put all this academic pressure on us in middle school. And Suzanne, frankly, I'm thrilled that we have our entire little Petri dish of middle school to experiment on this with.
It's great. Suzanne and I are collaborating on middle school curricula for the academy, the school where we teach, and it's actually really fun to take all the stuff we wish we'd done. And we wish we'd known and to be able to make that happen for so many people is cool.
[00:41:42] Suzanne: Well, and I will say now the kids, if the kids and the school heard this podcast, they'd be like, wait, my day is not nearly as fun as you're making it out to be, and partly that's because right. We have a two day a week. Curriculum, right? So we meet two days a week and we do focus. We do try to have fun.
I think we [00:42:00] manage a fair amount of fun, but we had fun this week. We had fun this week. There was Skittles involved and chopsticks. Yes. But it's, part of the reason we're trying to focus in those two days a week. You have the whole rest of the week to do all the other stuff. I mean you are doing homework and that kind of thing too, but it's a way of kind of setting aside some time, okay, this is going to be our academic time, but then that frees up.
That's the advantage of homeschooling, right? Is that we can play with our schedule that way. We can take advantage of all that free time. And by the way, before I forget, if you would do nothing else with your middle school or during these years, please go somewhere. Please travel. Please take advantage. of the fact that you're in control of your school schedule and take your middle schooler somewhere, whether you take a road trip across country to visit the grandparents in Colorado, or whether it is a it's just a long weekend.[00:43:00]
Three hours away for us. That would be like Chattanooga, something like that. They are so great. This age is so great to travel with and it's, there's, they, I can't even talk about it. I feel so strongly about it. I know. Money can sometimes be an issue. Resources can be an issue. But if you can, especially one on one, if you have more than one kid, one of the best things that we ever did in our family was at age 10, we instituted the tradition of mom and dad alternating.
So when they turned 10, their birthday gift was a weekend trip with just mom. The next year it was a weekend trip with just dad and. I, those have been one of the very best things our family has ever done and especially, I will tell you, if you and your middle schooler are butting heads sometimes, getting them out of the environment, doing something that's fun for both of you, where it's just the two of you, or it's a smaller group, where you can pick your [00:44:00] own schedule, and they can just do the stuff for fun.
That, that has been one of the absolutely best things homeschool ever did for us.
[00:44:08] Amy: And I'll say one of the things that I hear, I occasionally will write an article about homeschool budgets and finances and things that people are happy they spent money on and things that they wish they'd spent less on.
Everybody wishes they spent less money on curriculum stuff because you don't always use it all. Nobody ever wishes that they spent less money on travel. Everybody says, I wish we'd traveled more. I wish we'd spent more money on experiences and less money on curriculum.
[00:44:38] Suzanne: Absolutely. I'm definitely a hundred percent there.
I really found that the travel, not just for the learning experience, I'm a nerd, right? So if we go somewhere, I want to go to all the museums, and I want to see all the historical stuff, and I want to do all that. But not beyond that. The relationship building, and getting to know your kids, and getting to try [00:45:00] new things, it has just been so fun and so positive.
And A hundred percent, I would spend that money again, same thing with tip. The first year we did tip, we really had to do some soul searching my husband and I about whether that was the kind of money we wanted, whether that was really in the budget.
[00:45:18] Amy: Cause you have four. So once you've done it for one, that's right.
[00:45:21] Suzanne: That's right. You're always setting a precedent. We always had to be scared of setting a precedent. But after my oldest went one summer, he had such a great experience that it was, all right. We're going to make it work. We're going to, we're going to, that's where our money's going to go. So yeah, travel.
[00:45:38] Amy: So I think we're really talking about flipping the equation in a big way. We're talking about making middle school not so much about curriculum and Not so much about expanding beyond academically. It's really, it's the skills that you've already got are the things that you want to keep working on in middle [00:46:00] school.
You want to get better and confident and more comfortable. And instead of spending on curriculum for middle school, it almost makes sense to spend on experiences, on classes, on park days, on fun stuff.
[00:46:14] Suzanne: Yeah, I think so. I think so. So maybe that's another podcast in the future is what does that, because I still, you know me, I'm always gonna want to have that, that minimal I can't give up academics entirely.
And I can't advocate for that either, but now, I think it'd be fun to talk some more about what would that like minimal if I was redesigning it for myself, what would that look like? Because I, I think that's something that we are still thinking about and trying to put into practice in our own.
In our own school, right? In our own kind of minimal middle school.
[00:46:47] Amy: I think we're getting closer and closer to what we want to do. So I'm going to look forward to revisiting this topic with you. Because I think we'll have a lot of stuff we've learned. Some good things and some bad things from our experiences trying to make middle school [00:47:00] more like kindergarten.
[00:47:03] Suzanne: We've been so busy trying to make middle school more like kindergarten that I haven't done much in my regular life.
[00:47:08] Amy: Oh, I have no life. Is this the life section? Because I have no life right now.
[00:47:12] Suzanne: We have no life. We get very excited talking about reading lists for next year. That's our.
[00:47:18] Amy: Yeah, that's kind of what we're doing right now.
[00:47:19] Suzanne: It's wait, let's do something fun. Let's talk about assigned reading for next fall.
We're really pitiful right now. We're not unhappy. I quite enjoy talking about reading for next fall.
It's always better to be talking about next fall than the stuff that I should be doing for tomorrow, why is that? Yeah. No, you haven't made any mistakes yet. That's one thing.
Start fresh.
[00:47:41] Amy: That's true. It's all clean and shiny.
[00:47:44] Suzanne: It's all clean and shiny. Yeah, so we don't have But Go ahead.
[00:47:48] Amy: No. But can I point out that for once, I'm not the person who didn't finish the book. I finished the time. I just want it out there because I'm always like, Oh, I didn't finish, but Suzanne was nice.
But this [00:48:00] time it was Suzanne.
[00:48:00] Suzanne: I knew that's what you were going to talk about. I knew that was.
[00:48:03] Amy: I almost feel that you did it just to make me feel better, which I appreciate a lot if that's the case. You can tell me.
[00:48:09] Suzanne: No. I, we were going to read the Time Traveler's book. Time Traveler's Almanac, is that right?
Yes. Yes, and we still are. Yes. I still, I just have been, I have not yet read it, so I can't really talk much about it. I can talk about it. But look at us, rather than putting off the podcast because we hadn't read the book, we were like, no, we shall record anyway. We shall, we shall just talk. randomly and we will, it will all be fine.
[00:48:37] Amy: And really, Suzanne didn't have to read this book because Suzanne has gotten me hooked on what may be one of my all time favorite authors, certainly the new author that I am the most excited about. I haven't been this excited about books by someone in a long time.
I've enjoyed books. I've I thought, oh, this [00:49:00] is great. This is worth reading. But I'm fangirling now over N. K. Jemisin.
[00:49:04] Suzanne: She is so awesome, isn't she? And just and a, if you are not a reader of science fiction fantasy, if you are not familiar Which I'm not. Yeah, which is totally fine.
You're still, I still love you. If you're not familiar with that genre, you may never have heard of her. Although you will have heard of her inside that genre because she is busily winning all the awards. That she can, which is awesome and well deserved. Yeah. So I actually, I think, okay, here's the embarrassing thing.
I have read fewer of her books than you have at this point because,
[00:49:40] Amy: Now that's hilarious. But I, I just I got on, I got hooked and I can't stop.
The first, I read the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms Trilogy. Which is currently blowing my mind. This is the series that is blowing my mind right now.
I don't even know how to describe it.
[00:49:56] Suzanne: It's fantasy. It's, and it's marketed as fantasy. We were talking [00:50:00] about whether you could market, cause, Because, Amy's got pretty high standards for her writers, and I think that's one reason you were maybe blown away a little bit by Jemisin, is just her standard of writing is so high.
[00:50:11] Amy: It's excellent, and some of the questions that she raises within the text, some of them are questions that are particularly interesting to me, especially in the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. But even, I think she, her books are very philosophical in a really meaningful way, and I think she does interesting things with language and with construction.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, or the Inheritance Trilogy, is that's the name of it? Yeah, I think that's right. Is it the Inheritance Cycle or the Inheritance Trilogy? I get confused. I think you could go either way, and it would be okay. Okay. So it's about a world in which the gods have sort of the gods exist right as beings that you can talk to and touch and they've been enslaved by the chief God, [00:51:00] right?
The chief God has made a deal with the humans that enslaves the other gods, right? So you have this world where the most powerful people in the world are the most powerful because they control the gods. The gods have to do their bidding.
[00:51:16] Suzanne: Yeah, yeah, and it's all about colonialism. It is all about colonialism.
So it's a point of view for science fiction fantasy that is very new. As someone who's read in this genre for over 30 years, right? And who started out reading all the great old white guy authors, who I still have very soft spots for. Gosh, it is so great to see different perspectives and different ideas and different topics being tackled.
It's, that makes it sound like it's a textbook, but it isn't, it's really entertaining.
[00:51:54] Amy: Oh, it's so fun to read. I will, the first set of her books I read was the [00:52:00] Broken Earth Trilogy, and I only picked up the first book because it happened to be on sale for the Kindle, right? It was like a dollar ninety nine for the Kindle.
[00:52:08] Suzanne: That's her most recent, that's her most, that actually, she wrote that after The Hundred, The Inheritance.
Okay. And so Suzanne had been recommending N.K. Jemisin to me, so when I saw this, I was like, Oh, I'll pick it up. I'll put it on my Kindle. And a lot of times I'll get a book on my Kindle and I'll go and read the first chapter and then I'll go back and read it later.
I just want to skim to see what's going to happen. So it's, bedtime, I'm in bed reading on my device. I read the first chapter, I read the second chapter, I look up and it's two in the morning and I've been reading for hours because I just, I was so hooked. It is that kind of writing.
Okay. And if you're not, if you don't want to commit to a trilogy, she just recently published this past year, a collection of short stories. Which was excellent. How Long Till Black Futures Month, I believe is the title. Which is quite the provocative title,
but. I. I, I have not read those yet.
[00:52:58] Amy: When you do, they're great.
[00:52:59] Suzanne: [00:53:00] Just pity me. I'm reading biographies over here. I'm reading a biography of Hitler, which by the way, I know you can't really take that out in public. I don't want to be like on the bus reading my biography of Hitler. And
[00:53:11] Amy: so I will say your Mussolini biography payoff was really good because the junior high students are all going around talking about how Mussolini got kicked out of school for knifing someone more than once.
[00:53:22] Suzanne: At age 11. Was the first one, by the way, just in case you were wondering. Yeah, so I haven't had a lot of time for fun reading, but but yeah she's great. I recommend her and she can bring you, and there's a whole great world of like the author of Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor, of women, people of color people who, you know, non, non-binary or who identify as queer there's all these great new voices.
Oh, there's a great book. I'm probably gonna get the name wrong. Rebecca Roanhorse, I think, that came out last [00:54:00] year and it is a post apocalyptic fantasy set on set in Native America, set in, set among Native Americans. Oh, it's so good. Trail of Lightning. And. Again, so we're seeing more, and she is Native American, that's her heritage, so she is writing from her heritage, and there's just a lot of really great stuff happening right now look around, try something out.
[00:54:27] Amy: I definitely owe you one for recommending Jemisin, because it has been delightful to be so excited about books.
[00:54:35] Suzanne: I'm never going to recommend anything again because I got Space Opera. That was a win. And then this one is a win. And so I'm just going to rest on those laurels, I think, for the next decade or so.
No, you can't let me down because I, Jemisin is pretty prolific and still writing. So that's good.
As is Valente. As is as Catherine Valente from Space Opera.
[00:54:54] Amy: I like Catherine Valente and I loved Space Opera, but she is not[00:55:00] every one of her books is not a hit like that for me, the way that it is for you.
[00:55:03] Suzanne: I will say, I have never, you have liked, when I write, I recommend maybe 50 50, like 50 like you never complained that I can't believe I, you made me read this book, but you don't always, it's not always a hit.
[00:55:14] Amy: I always feel like you recommend stuff that was worth reading, right? Which is totally fine, right?
[00:55:19] Suzanne: That's totally fine. My feelings aren't hurt at all. And And no, they're really not, because if you have a friend that, that like half of everything they recommend to you, you're going to enjoy, that's a pretty good, that's a pretty good average.
[00:55:29] Amy: I feel like that's a really high percentage.
[00:55:32] Suzanne: But I have never seen you jump up and down about someone like you have been over N. K. Jemisin. I have never seen this level of excitement from you. before.
[00:55:41] Amy: No, I'm totally like fangirling her like crazy, which, if you know me as a reader, is pretty hilarious because I am.
[00:55:48] Suzanne: You are picky, man. You are.
[00:55:49] Amy: I am a little picky. I'm not snobby.
[00:55:54] Suzanne: You have high standards. I'm going to put it like that.
[00:55:57] Amy: I have high standards. They're not snobby standards.
[00:55:59] Suzanne: [00:56:00] You are so well read that you that you have evolved very high standards. Which is awesome,
[00:56:05] Amy: but I highly recommend Jemisin. I'm totally jumping on Suzanne's wagon on this one because she was spot on.
[00:56:14] Suzanne: We'll have to pick something of hers to read. Ooh, we've talked about a side podcast where you and I just read things and talk about them. I Love that idea. That would be, we would never miss one of those. Even if we didn't read the thing, we would still be laughing.
[00:56:30] Amy: No, we can talk about it. We'll just, Let's talk about the background reading we did to prepare for it.
[00:56:36] Suzanne: That's right. Let me just tell you, I got, about the, I got so tired of reading Hitler that I picked up my favorite Georgette Heyer. So I can talk about that. I can talk about that. If you're wondering, Cotillion and the Grand Sophie are my top two.
[00:56:48] Amy: Oh, the Grand Sophie is my top one. It's so good.
[00:56:51] Suzanne: It's so good. It's so good. Do we have anything else that we need to, that we need to talk about?
[00:56:57] Amy: I think this wraps it up. I think this [00:57:00] is it for another episode of the podcast with Suzanne and Amy brought to you by home/school/life magazine and our lovely Patreon subscribers.
We love you guys. We will be back next month with more conversation about all the places where home, school, and life intersect, and probably, having read the Time Traveler's Almanac. We can always hope. So we'll see you then. We can always hope. hAve a great month. Keep reading, keep homeschooling, and it's all going to turn out okay. It's going to be fine. Cheers. Bye.
